BOSTON GLOBE (Massachusetts) 03 April 08 Activist uses tag to protect vernal pools (John Dyer)
Thaddeus Soulé is on a mission. He wants to make sure frogs and salamanders can find love in the springtime.
Last year, as a member of Southborough's Open Space Preservation Commission, Soulé conducted searches on town-owned land that resulted in the certification of three vernal pools, increasing the town’s number to five. Now he wants to help local property owners do the same on their land.
The small, shallow pools typically exist for only a few months during the wet season, when they provide a breeding and incubating spot for amphibians and a home for turtles and short-lived, tiny crustaceans called fairy shrimp.
"It's an old farm pond," said Soulé recently, as he stood by the vernal pool he registered in 2006 in Southborough's Breakneck Hill conservation area. "When I found a spotted salamander egg mass, I knew it was for real. Who knows how deep it is in the middle?"
State environmental officials said certification gives vernal pools an added layer of protection against development and pollution, and helps preserve the area's biological diversity.
But certification can be controversial. Once a pool is certified, state officials said, the potential exists to stop development nearby. And whoever is proposing to have a body of water declared as a vernal pool doesn't need to be the property's owner.
"If someone collects data and gives it to us, we can use it no matter what," said Lisa Plagge, a biologist with the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. "But that person who collected the data and trespassed can be prosecuted."
Soulé, who works for a Southborough-based environmental consulting firm, Beals and Thomas Inc., said he would never certify pools on someone else’s land. But he wants property owners to know how to document and preserve the ecology in their backyards.
"It goes back to the whole balance between conservation and development," he said. "It's a matter of quality of life. I'm trying to do a good thing for a good thing's sake."
To certify a vernal pool, Mass-Wildlife needs proof that certain species, like wood frogs, live in it. Fish can't live in the pool - frogs and salamanders don't lay their eggs where fish might eat tadpoles and larvae. Streams or brooks can't flow into it, either. The pool needs to be confined.
Would-be certifiers need only send photographs and completed forms to MassWildlife's Westborough office.
Plagge said most vernal pools last for around three months, but some hold water all year. Massachusetts has around 4,640 certified pools, she said.
In Westborough, which has 42 official vernal pools, a lot of people took it upon themselves to have them certified, said Plagge.
If a vernal pool is far from a swamp, marsh, or other water, then it would not be covered by the state's Wetlands Protection Act, said Wayne Lozzi, an environmental analyst with the Department of Environmental Protection.
Local bylaws might protect it, however. Southborough doesn't allow development within 20 feet of bodies of water, including vernal pools, said Soulé.
But if a certified vernal pool is near an area already covered by the wetlands regulations, developers must prove they won't harm it or can mitigate any damage before they would be allowed to build, said Lozzi.
Lozzi would not discuss examples of vernal pools stopping development, saying he couldn't comment on any projects going through DEP’s appeal process.
But he had an opinion about observing the miracle of life in vernal pools.
"I find it pretty exciting and neat when you do come across them," Lozzi said. "Seeing the egg masses and watching them as they hatch is a really neat experience."
Activist uses tag to protect vernal pools